Pit Stop Equation, help?

[captainmorgan]

Im just playing around with some numbers for pit stop estimates.

Can someone tell me if the total time it takes to make a pit stop (including everything, initial deceleration from speed, pit lane speed, pitting, pitlane and exit, accelerating to average lap speed), in ideal conditions, does this number stay the same regardless of track? If so what is this value or range?

[Scuderia_Russ]

It depends on the lengh of the pitlane. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Monza has the shortest and Indy or Spa might have the longest. Obviously the longer the pitlane the longer a driver will be driving on the speedlimiter.

[Venom]

Sepang, Malaysia has the long pit lane. Usually it takes about 25secs for cars to make a pit stop and continue with the race.

[joseff]

Also Interlagos has a long exit. Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has a long/twisty exit.

Simply put, I don't think you can write a simple equation for it. IIRC it's about 22 seconds for the short ones, 26-27 for the longer ones. Of course no. of stops and pitlane length influence each other.

[taleed]

It varries.....you can do it yourself, your just too lazy or you ran-out of things to ask. just joking
: )

[Ciro Pabón]

I was toying with the same concept. I counted this morning several pit stops at Sepang. Average: 35 seconds. Number of pit stops averaged: 4. Clock used: an old Nina Ricci automatic mechanical clock... The average official pit time for the four pit stops I clocked was 8.6 seconds (the time they show onscreen).

I started my chrono when the car took the turn into the pit lane and stopped when I judged that the car was as fast as the other running cars, in the curve after the pit exit.

The problem is I have no good data on lap times. How I miss Gale Force! http://www.galeforcef1.com/. This means I find it difficult to calculate how much your lap times are affected by your fuel load. Besides, the estimates I have found on the actual quantity of fuel the cars have inboard vary wildly. But...

If you call Ta the time for an average lap with full fuel load, and you start with a full load (go, Kimi!), then the first lap takes Ta (duhhh...). If you call Dt the differential in time you get by one lap worth of fuel, next turn takes Ta-Dt, next turn Ta-2Dt, etc. This means that your time for the entire race would be N*(Ta - 1/2*Dt), if you could cover the N laps of the race with the full fuel load. The tires are acting against your times. Lets think this is a lineal effect: every turn you are slower by Tt, the time your degrading tires are adding to your lap time. So, your first lap takes Ta, your next lap takes Ta-Dt+Tt, etc. Finally, in a zero-pit stop strategy, your race takes N*(Ta-1/2*Dt + 1/2*Tt)

Actually, you can cover only N/2 laps, if you are on one-stop strategy, or N/3 if you are on a two-stop race, etc. After the N/2 laps, you expend Pt in pit time (the 35 seconds I measured).

On a one stop strategy, your total time would be N*(Ta-1/2*Dt+1/2*Tt) + Pt.

I am too busy to take this to its conclusion. If nobody is interested, I would retake this thing next week... Besides, I bet there is some kind of lap times calculator around the Web.